MANSFIELD, Conn. – The Westfield State University field hockey team erased one-goal deficits twice, getting goals from three different players over 22 minutes in the middle periods and posting a 5-3 Little East Conference victory over Eastern Connecticut State University Friday afternoon at Rick McCarthy Field.
With an opportunity to move into a two-way tie for first place with leader Keene State College with a win, Eastern (7-4, 5-2 LEC) led twice in the first half before Westfield (7-7, 6-2 LEC) roared back with three consecutive goals to build a 4-2 lead with 17 minutes left.
With its fifth win over Eastern in the last six meetings and its fourth straight (Little East) victory overall, Westfield moves a half-game ahead of Eastern in the standings and a half-game behind idle Keene State, which visits Framingham State University in an LEC match Saturday at 7 p.m. The Owls have won three straight road games in six days after losing their first five away from home.
Westfield, which was 1-11 in the LEC in the last full season of competition in 2019, got goals from five different players in the match, with four of the five also collecting assists.
Eastern took its second lead of the match four minutes into the second quarter, but Westfield needed less than two minutes to tie it, then broke a 2-2 halftime tie when it got goals exactly eight minutes apart in the third quarter from senior Skyla Harthcock (Martha's Vineyard, MA)– her first – and senior Cheryl Latona (Granby) – her team-leading ninth – to take a 4-2 lead into the final quarter.
The Warriors showed resilience when senior Corey Callahan (South Windsor) brought Eastern to within one with her second goal of the year with just under four minutes left, but the Owls answered again, needing only 33 seconds to re-gain the two-goal advantage on sophomore Madison Ouellette's (Uxbridge, MA) second goal of the season.
Eastern sophomore Leah Kowalasky (Middlebury) had given Eastern a 1-0 lead in the final minutes of the first half with her first goal of the season, and graduate student Brianna Nolan (Watertown) recorded her team-leading ninth to give the Warriors their final lead, 2-1, four minutes into the second quarter. The goal was the 20th in the 50-game career of Nolan, making her the eighth player in program history to reach that milestone.
Eastern piled up a season-high 20 penalty corners (to nine for Westfield, which managed only three after the first quarter) but couldn't take full advantage of those offensive opportunities. The Warriors' 25 shots (to 15 for Westfield) were also a season-high, but less than half of those attempts found their way to the cage.
Senior Riley Goulet (Marion, MA) made nine saves in the win while senior Sarah Gallagher (South Windsor) was credited with eight.
In three of its last four losses to Westfield, Eastern has surrendered a total of 16 goals.
The Owls will look to continue their hot streak as of late as they return home to face Framingham State in a conference match-up on Wednesday at 7:00 P.M. Eastern visits Massachusetts Dartmouth in a 4 p.m. conference makeup game Monday before hosting Western Connecticut State University Wednesday in an LEC match at 4 p.m. The top eight teams in the 13-team conference qualify for the LEC playoffs, which get underway Nov. 2 at the site of the four highest seeds.